THE SURPRISE TURN
"Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour,
The heavy white limbs and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower,
When these are gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
Oh wicked and sombre Dolores."
--SWINBURNE.
There swept down towards the impromptu foot-lights an apparition tall
and beautiful. Dressed as a Spanish lady, it was a study in black,
white, and red. Black was the mantilla draped so filmily over the
glossy black hair, black was the sequined gown that clung to the slim
shape, black was the fan that waved, beckoned, hid, revealed and hid
again in a series of gestures, each more perfectly and subtly
coquettish than the last.
White was the handsome face, whiter the proud shoulders above the
cut-out bodice. Scarlet was the carnation worn just under the ear,
and vividly scarlet were the made-up lips of this new performer.
"Whoever is it?" ejaculated Peggy, loudly, and then clapped a hand
over her mouth. But there was a perceptibly louder buzz in the talk
all over the hall.
"Say; who's she?"
"Isn't she beautiful?"
"Lovely figure----"
"Little bit o' Dixie, eh?"
"Sssh---- The Captain's goin' to make a speech about her!"
For Captain Holiday had stepped forward from his place by the piano
and had, with a sort of little laughing flourish, taken the lovely
creature's black-gloved hand.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "as an extra, my friend Signora
Dolores has kindly consented to sing an old-fashioned song, entitled
'Carissima.'"
He went back to his seat. Muriel at the piano, with an unexpectedly
sweet smile towards this rival beauty, this wonderful stranger who
was to sing, struck the first rippling chords of an accompaniment.
Then, from those vermilioned lips there broke out in a low contralto
voice the first notes of the song:
"Carissima, the night is fair----"
What a voice! It was not powerful--indeed, it seemed to me as if the
singer were using only part of it--but to what purpose! It was sweet
as the deepest brown honey, and of a quality that--well! even as the
water-finder's rod goes straight home to the hidden spring, so that
kind of voice, "finds" the listener's heart--finds tears.
Surprised at myself, I blinked those tears away. I glanced from the
black, white and scarlet beauty on the stage to the audience for a
moment. All spellbound, all a-gaze.
I saw little Mrs. Price--a row back--slip her hand into that of her
gentle giant beside her. I saw Vic's face without a smile, full of
brooding tender memories. I saw Elizabeth all tense ... the
soldier-boys were serious, intent; the country people behind them
looked as full of solemn, poignant enjoyment as if this were not a
mere Concert, but a funeral itself.
As for me, I was ashamed of myself. I had to bite my lips and clench
my hands as the syrupy Victorian melody was crooned out to the
inanely Victorian words:--
"Carissima! Cariss--ima!
The night and I wa-ant oh-oh-oh-only thee!"
Yes; I was having to fight those senseless tears away from my eyes as
I listened.
Oh! It wasn't "cricket" for that woman to sing so that she could
reduce a healthy matter-of-fact Land-worker to this state of--of
mushy sentimentality!
She did more than that. Before the end of the second verse she made
me realize something that left me gasping.
I was just thinking, while I listened:
"Ah, if her voice goes so straight home, unconsciously, what must be
the effect if she sings 'at' somebody?"
Then I saw her do that very thing. Slightly, raising the fan with a
little studied gesture, the singer tilted her head and launched from
under her eyelashes a deliberate glance at Captain Holiday. I saw
him raise his brown chin out of his hand and look back at her hard,
too.
Then I saw the Signora's reddened lips tremble, even through the
song, into the very wickedest of smiles that would not be suppressed.
It dimpled her powdered cheeks; it almost shut her long-lashed eyes;
what a tantalizing and lovely sight! But everybody in the place must
have seen that she was singing "at" him; must have heard it!
"Carissima!"
cooed that wooing contralto with its invincible appeal,
"Cariss-ima!
My boat and I will come to thee."
And with "thee" the glance was more unmistakably "at" Captain Holiday
than before.
Then I knew.
This Spaniard--if she were Spanish?--this stranger with the voice and
the fan and the shoulders, and the slim hips and the witching glances
that surely no man on earth could withstand, must be "she" of whom
Captain Holiday had spoken to me!
Not Muriel, after all. The blonde prettiness of Muriel looked
positively ineffectual beside this vivid brunette. She, yes! she
must be "THE" girl he'd meant.
Here was a discovery.
But the annihilating part of it was this--that I minded horribly.
For in a flash I felt that I could not deny it to myself. No longer
could I pretend to my own heart. Jealous I was, more so than I'd
ever been before. But now it was not because of Harry at all. It
never would be Harry again.
It was mad pain to me to see a woman--any woman--bent upon attracting
Dick Holiday.
Yes, I'd come to the truth now. This had shown it to me.
At last I realized that I was in love with him....
Here was a discovery, wasn't it?
* * * * * * *
In love with Captain Holiday! Of all people in the world!
What in the world had he ever done to make me in love with him?
That first time at the hut he had been hideously rude to me; had come
up to me and, unintroduced, had asked me how long I thought I was
going to stick life in the Land Army!
I remembered his smile as he said it.
Then that next time in the cowshed. He'd come upon me in the act of
chucking work, and he'd let me know that he knew it. Then he'd laid
down the law to me about the way to "muck out," as the country phrase
has it, the way to hold a pitchfork, and the way to trundle a barrow
up to the manure-heap. Nothing in that to make a girl take any sort
of a fancy to him!
Later on, he had informed me that I should make a rotten poor
hen-wife, just because I'd forgotten the milk for the chickens' food!
Not very endearing, that remark!
That same afternoon, however, he had been friendly. He'd walked back
with me, talking all the way. But what about? His own love affair.
The problem of the girl to whom he had proposed, and who had said
neither "yes" nor "no" to him. And I--not realizing that I was
getting too fond of the sound of his voice whatever it happened to be
saying--I had asked him what sort of a girl she was. He'd said the
words that had been ringing in my head ever since: "Ah, well! She's
just the girl I want."
* * * * * * *
And now here she was; I saw her before me, the beautiful Spanish-clad
singer, on this very concert platform, not more than arms' length
from him.
I found myself simply hating her! The last words of her song--oh!
how that tune of "Carissima" was going to haunt me--melted away.
Muriel played the last chord, and again the racket of applause broke
out.
She smiled with all her white teeth; she bowed, gracefully enough but
put her hand with a curious little jerk to her side as she did so.
How the boys clapped her! So did I, of course, and, holding myself
well in hand, I exchanged comments on the lovely voice with the other
girls through the clatter and the cries of "'Core! Encore!"
The Signora gave a little nod that she would take the encore to
Muriel, who was clapping as enthusiastically as any of the audience.
And the second song she sang was the revue success: "For the First
Love is the Best Love!" which she rendered as perfectly as she had
the Victorian ballad. I could have murdered her for that!
Half in anguish of jealousy, half in rapture because of the
performance, I sat listening again. She had the low, throaty
deliciousness of some of Miss Violet Loraine's own notes; very
wisely, she was imitating her as closely as possible in her rendering
of her best song.
"The new Love
Is never the true Love!"
she carolled, and again I felt the keen stab of seeing her
mischievously tender glance at Captain Holiday.
Oh, yes. She must be going to take him--after that!
And at the end of the song, when she stood still again, swaying her
fan to the applause, she maddened me by a further piece of deliberate
coquetry.
Putting up a hand to the coal-black hair under her mantilla, she took
out the scarlet carnation that was tucked close to her ear. She
kissed the flower with those lips, painted so red. Then, holding it
for a moment, she smiled from the carnation to Captain Holiday, if
saying, "Shall I let him have it? Shall I?" She made a little,
quick gesture as if to toss it to him, across the platform. Then,
with a lightning-swift shake of her lovely head, she took that flower
and threw it down into the auditorium for any to catch who could.
A dozen hands went out for it. I don't know if she were specially
aiming at the row in which we Land Girls found ourselves, but at all
events the carnation dropped almost straight into the small, brown,
competent paw of Elizabeth, my chum, who had always been used to
catch and throw a cricket ball just as a boy does.
She, Elizabeth, tucked the scented souvenir into the breast of her
overall. The signora, standing tall and slim just above the
footlights that beat up on to the vivid white and scarlet of her
make-up, sent down one more smile--a specially witching one. Then
she withdrew. Captain Holiday set up another piece of music on the
piano, and the concert proceeded.
It was Peggy's sweetheart, the sergeant, who sang next.
At least, I fancy it was. For, to tell you the truth, I have only
the most confused impression of the various faces and figures that
appeared, one after another, close to Muriel's piano on that stage.
Sometimes it was one of the red-white-and-blue wounded boys.
Sometimes the slim, white-frocked figure of the village
schoolmaster's daughter, for whom they brought in a harp.
I was drawn away from it to the drama in my own mind.
I--to have grown to care for Captain Holiday! Fool that I was to
have allowed myself----
But, then, I hadn't allowed myself. I had not known it was
happening. Now it had irretrievably happened. Tonight had shown me
that too plainly.
What fate was upon me? Twice in my life I had been doomed to fall in
love with the wrong man. First with Harry Markham, who certainly had
done all in his power to bring it about. Now with Captain Dick
Holiday, who had never flirted with me for an instant.
Well, I must try to cure myself as soon as possible--that was the
only thing.
I must, somehow, take myself severely in hand and refuse to let
myself mind so horribly because a woman with a voice to match her
lovely face had got Captain Holiday at her feet.
But for the life of me I could not help wondering who the singer was.
Signora Dolores--was she really a Signora? Or was she an English
girl of an arrestingly Spanish type? Where had she come from? And
when had she come to Careg? How long was she going to stay in the
house?
I wondered how Muriel liked that Spanish girl who had so completely
taken the shine out of her.
I wondered if she--the wonderful singer--were going to sing again.
She did not.
I realized that this was more of her coquetry; to make one marvellous
appearance, to reap her success, and then to refuse to reappear until
the last note of "God save the King" had been sung, with all the
wounded soldiers, and ourselves of the Land Army, standing to
attention.
Yes; at last it came to the end of the concert. Votes of thanks had
been proposed and seconded. Cheers had been given for our host,
Captain Holiday, for the performers, and for "the pretty young lady
who had so kindly consented to act as accompanist," but there was no
further sign of the lovely lady who had sang "Carissima."
I supposed that she, with the rest of the house-party, would be
having a merry little supper afterwards, presided over by Captain
Holiday. I am afraid that at the thought of this I felt myself
literally trembling with passionate envy.
The audience, laughing and talking, began to move slowly from between
the rows of chairs out from the concert-room. I found that I was
deadly tired; an evening of emotion takes it out of a girl
considerably more than a day of farm-work! I turned for comfort to
the sturdy little boyish figure of Elizabeth.
I made myself say, "It has been jolly, hasn't it?"
Elizabeth nodded her bobbed head.
I glanced at the red flower she had tucked into her overall, and
said: "That woman, you know, who sang those two songs, she was the
best of all."
Elizabeth, with a very quick look up at me, asked brusquely, "Which
woman?"
I had opened my mouth to answer, "Why, the Spanish lady, of course,"
but the words froze on my lips at the picture of which I had caught
sight at this moment.
In the vestibule, at the foot of the wide stairs, stood Captain
Holiday, laughing whole-heartedly; a group of people were clustered
about him and about another figure standing close to him waving a big
black fan. This figure was the sight that arrested me.
It was tall and slim-hipped, clad in a black and spangled gown with a
low-cut bodice that revealed noble white shoulders; it was, as far as
the figure went, that of the Signora Dolores who had appeared at the
beginning of the second part of the concert; but--where were the
mantilla and the glossy black tresses over which it had been so
artistically draped? Gone--one with the other! Above the white
shoulders appeared the laughing face and the small
mercilessly-groomed golden head of a young man!
"Topping girl he makes, doesn't he?" I heard the voice of the
red-haired actor-soldier say just behind me. "That's when I make him
up; his own mother wouldn't know him. Why, the female impersonator
we had in our Brigade troupe isn't a patch on him; not the
professional who used to get fifteen quid a week salary! Asked me
for a few tips, he did. But there was nothing I could teach him;
only lace him into his 23-inch ladies' corsets----"
I was gasping as I looked. Now that I saw the black wig dangling
from the hand that held the fan, now that I knew--oh, I felt I ought
to have guessed before.
The things that give away any masquerading "girl" were there. Bert
Errol and Co. have not yet learnt to hide the thickness of the wrist,
the muscle down the neck just under the ear, the checked and
conscious movements of limbs that know no medium between mincing and
the normal stride, and (most unmistakable of all) the angle of the
male arm at the elbow, which makes "V" instead of "U," as in a
woman's soft arm.
All the rest was--what an excellent disguise!
"Elizabeth!" I exclaimed stupidly, "look!"
"I know," said Elizabeth briefly.
"But, my dear," I said, still aghast over the revelation that Dolores
was not "THE" girl, not even "a" girl, "did you know when she--when
he was singing?"
Elizabeth, with a hand at the red flower in her smock, said: "I knew
days ago. Colonel Fielding told me himself that he was going to."
Colonel Fielding!
The "lovely" stranger was--Elizabeth's "old Colonel."